2013 Domaine de Trevallon IGP Alpilles 750 ml

Parker: One of the Greatest Discoveries in My Life

Everything about Domaine de Trévallon demands your attention. Start with the iconic wine label painted by estate founder René Dürrbach, close friend and artistic peer of Léger and Picasso. The wine inside is even more memorable. None other than Robert Parker declared, “One of the greatest discoveries in my life has been the wine made at the Domaine de Trévallon.” And this vintage inspired France’s leading wine publication, La Revue des Vins de France, to proclaim, “Without any doubt, this is the greatest red wine from Provence in 2013.” Usually reserved for elite restaurants, we were able to quietly secure a small lot of this legendary wine for our clients. Clear at least as much space in your memory bank as your cellar.

Deep in the wild, bucolic hill-country of Les Baux-de-Provence, just south of Avignon, hides one of France’s greatest secrets: Domaine de Trévallon. In the latter half of the 20th century, the hinterlands of southern France birthed a number of iconoclastic masterpieces — Mas de Daumas Gassac, Roc d’Anglade, Grange des Pères to name a few — but above them all in elegance, finesse, and sophistication is the Cabernet and Syrah blend of Domaine de Trévallon.

The iconic cellar building, inspired by the cubist art of the Dürrbach clan’s patriarch René, is just one indication of the vision at work here. Everything at the estate is done the hard way — organic viticulture, whole cluster fermentation, and a long maturation in large foudre, but the magic of Trévallon is in the special union of the Dürrbach family’s meticulous energy and this very special terroir. Much like the Super Tuscans, Trévallon was forced out of the Le Baux AOC in the early 1990s due to the high percentage of Cabernet in their wine. Eloi Dürrbach, as iconoclastic as his famous artist father, simply shrugged and kept on making one of Provence’s greatest reds.

René Dürrbach died in 1999 at 89 years old. Eloi and his children Ostiane and Antoine continue René’s legacy, working the gentle north-facing slopes littered with chunks white limestone shaded from the blazing Mediterranean sun. What these Dürrbachs make is art, just as surely as the iconic labels René painted before he left this world.